BENETSEE AND HIS DOGS were gone. The spring weather was terrible. Every year, it killed flatlanders dressed too lightly. Hypothermia set in, they got disoriented, and they died trying to make fires after they had forgotten how to strike a match.
Only thing to be afraid of here is a cold wind, thought Du Pré.
And other people—some of the time.
He opened the door of Benetsee’s stove and thrust a finger down in the ashes. Cold. Settled. So he’d been gone at least three days. Maybe five. It didn’t matter. The old man would be fine, wherever he was. He’d come round when he wished to.
I wonder if the Prophets were as much of a pain in the ass, Du Pré thought. Must have been. People killed them for a little peace and quiet.
Du Pré left the jug of wine on the table. He unscrewed the top so that if it froze pink ice would ooze out and the jug wouldn’t burst. He rolled a cigarette out of the wind and smoked. He went back out to his tired old cruiser and got in and sat, looking up at the surging sky. The weather was high up. A few mackerel clouds.
He looked at the side of the road. The little pasque flowers were up. Boil the bulbs down, you got a thick green gum that made a good arrow poison. The first flowers of spring are death. This country is a person.
He drove on toward Bart’s new house. The weather had been dry and windy and the mud didn’t cling so much. Few more days of wind and sun, it would be dust. Snow, mud, and dust, the three seasons of Montana.
The front door was standing ajar. Du Pré looked at it a moment and wondered if Bart and Michelle had left it so. He took his 9mm from the glove box and racked a round into the chamber. He circled the house, looking for tracks, but all he found were old ones.
He still pushed the door open and went in gun-first. He checked the place out.
All I know about this is from watching cop movies, Du Pré thought. Hope the guy I’m looking for only watches cop movies, too. Even odds.
This is silly, he thought, straightening up.
The air inside the log house was cold and smelled of pitch. Du Pré fired up the rocket heater to take the chill off. He looked at the muddy footprints on the floor. Mine. Bart’s big feet. Michelle’s. It seemed a long time ago.
The place heated up rapidly. The rocket heater, designed to dry topping compound on sheetrock, threw out a vast amount of heat in very short order. By the time that Du Pré had gotten his tool belt on, the dull was gone, and by the time he had swept the place out, it was getting too warm.
A ton of work—build cabinets, case things out, trim. Won’t be able to finish before I got to go with Lucky and them down the River of the Whales.
But I think that it will take a long time for Bart to talk Michelle into leaving her pavement and muggers for sagebrush and coyotes. So I wonder now if Bart will ever live in this house. Play with his dragline again. Maybe he doesn’t really like it here, just needed a far place to get well in.
Du Pré switched on the planer and started to feed the pine through, taking it down so he could fair off the window casings. He stared at the blades intently. They could take off the tips of fingers faster than the eye could follow.
The planer screamed.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Du Pré whirled, and the piece of wood he let go shot through the planer and slammed through the lower glass of a window before sailing out into the mud. Du Pré was scrabbling for his 9mm.
“Yer phone’s ringin’!” yelled Booger Tom. He was looking at Du Pré like Du Pré had three noses. Du Pré remembered he’d laid the 9mm down over by the toolboxes.
Du Pré shut off the planer.
Booger Tom walked out the door, shaking his head and muttering.
Du Pré lifted the phone. He pressed the button.
“Du Pré!” said Michelle. “Christ, I must have let it ring forty times.”
“I got to hook a light up to it,” said Du Pré. “I was running the planer and I couldn’t hear anything. “Wouldn’t have heard a bear if it walked up and commenced taking a chunk out of my ass.
“Chase has split. We can’t find him,” said Michelle. “We are going henshit here.”
“Oh,” said Du Pré.
“Just oh?” said Michelle.
“I don’t think it is him,” said Du Pré. “The killer, he just uses Chase for cover. Maybe he follows Chase, though. I don’t know.”
“The little girls were visiting with a school group, both of them were Ojibwa. The teachers and parents who came kept a close eye on them. We still don’t know how they got separated, or if one was snatched and then the other.”
Du Pré didn’t say anything.
“Knife,” said Michelle. “The bodies were shoved in a cabinet, a guard noticed blood seeping out the door.”
“I can’t find Benetsee,” said Du Pré. “His dogs are gone, too. He travels, I don’t know how. Maybe the trains.”
“Is he Métis?” asked Michelle.
“I don’t know,” said Du Pré. “Sometimes I think he was here before God. He’s …I don’t know.”
“Chase wouldn’t go out there, would he?”
“I don’t think so,” said Du Pré. “I don’t think that he likes me very much. Also, he is a coward, you know. He may be crazy, but he is still a coward. So, no…”
“When do you go to Canada?” asked Michelle.
“I go maybe three weeks,” said Du Pré. “Whenever I am going, I think I go earlier than I say.”
“Good,” said Michelle. “Wait a minute.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone.
“Sorry,” she said. “Well, let me know when you do go.”
“Sure,” said Du Pré.
Du Pré turned the telephone back off. He rolled a cigarette and smoked. He nodded.
He unplugged all the extension cords and dropped his tools in the box. He shrugged into his jacket and tucked the 9mm in the waistband of his pants.
He went out, shutting the door and slipping the wooden block into the hole in the doorframe to block it shut.
He walked over to the bunkhouse and banged on the door. Booger Tom came finally, yawning.
“I have to go away for a while,” said Du Pré.
Booger Tom nodded and shut the door.
Du Pré went home and packed. He didn’t need a lot. He put the duffel in the trunk of his car. He locked the 9mm in his little gun room off the bedroom.
He drove over to Madelaine’s.
The next morning before daylight he drove off. She stood in the doorway in her white nightdress, one hand upraised.